Category Archives: Life

I’m Don Alfonso, I work for Oxo

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To my surprise I’ve discovered exactly the right amount of World Cup to watch to make it bearable. That is to say, about 35 minutes of the last game. It does help the strategy if the winning goal is scored within that period.

Bonusbarn actually turned the TV on. I wandered through, found there were about 5 minutes of a no score game to run and stayed out of curiosity. Then of course they added 30 minutes of extra time. At some point Best Beloved decided to join in with the male bonding too and so we actually watched the rest of the game as a family.

I think it helped that I had even less idea who any of this lot were than I did about our own team. Maybe back in the Netherlands and Spain they’re in the papers just as much as Tall Thick Guy and Little Guy with the Funny Eyes but to me they were just a bunch of even more anonymous than usual quite good football players; though while the Spanish in their dark blue were quite distinct on screen, the Dutch really were just fuzzy orange blobs in the long shots. And it was kind of fun, watching the ref machine gun the orange side with his yellow cards, and amusing myself during the times where everyone stood still and kicked the ball to each other by working out how often the advertising screens changed image (every 2 and 32 seconds, since you ask).

Then someone went and scored, which kind of validated the last 35 minutes when I could have been in bed reading a book, so that was okay. One of the goalies seemed to be in floods of tears but I think it was the one who hadn’t let a goal in. I’m sure it makes sense.

So: Wimbledon down, World Cup down, just the cricket to miss now. Oh criminy, and the bloody Olympics in 2012. Meh.

Invisible boundaries

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Rather sweet, isn’t it? You get little reminders like this everywhere you walk in Harwell, giving the impression our nuclear secrets are protected by well-maintained flower beds and perhaps invisible forcefields.

Back in the used-to-be, RAF Harwell’s giant aircraft hangars left over from the war were used to house things like GLEEP and other faintly – or even extremely – glow-in-the-dark type toys. This was before they invented cool-sounding names for nuclear reactors, of course. A single fence enclosed every affected area and the bits in between too, and a right pain it was for the rest of us.

Two of the hangars were demolished a couple of years ago (the third still stands) but the fenced-off area remained. Until I noticed, the other day, taking the obligatory two-sides-of-a-triangle route to the shops past the main gate at lunchtime, that the war against terrorism seemed to have been won. No armed guards at the main gate. The barriers stood invitingly open. What gives?

The answer is that they’ve mostly taken the fence down. The seriously affected areas still remain fenced off, including the site of the two ex-hangars which is now a bit of grassland where rabbits can breed safe from predators but at increased risk of mutation. But you can now walk between the fenced off areas. You can vary your route! You can walk straight to the shops from work, hooray. I had no idea there’s a lake in there (technically). And everywhere you come across these little souvenirs, abandoned in place, of what once was.